This is the fifteenth in a series of monthly updates we'll be posting on the last Saturday of every month (JST) until Tokyo Dark's release. If you want to follow development in more detail and you are an [ Access Pack ] + backer remember to drop into the Tokyo Dark backer's forum for our weekly updates every Saturday. If weekly and monthly updates aren't quite enough, you can follow us on Twitter or Facebook for your midweek Cherrymochi fix.

[ Dev Update ]

A smooth month of development. We completed work on two new locations / sequences in the latest build, one is light-hearted and will make you smile, the other is extremely dark and unnerving. It's been fun, but a little manic switching between the two styles & atmospheres.

As well as new game content we hit another big production milestone by wrapping up character animation work for all the cut scenes. There are over 20 shots of beautiful anime style character animation in Tokyo Dark.

Still from the new opening cutscene

We hope you'll agree that Detective Itō is looking gorgeous, and she looks even better when moving! As you know we're a tiny studio, making our first game together, so we're proud to be able to include such stunning animation. It's all down to you hitting the animation stretch goal in the last days of the campaign, thank you & high-fives all around!

[ Word count ]

Writing is going well, the latest Tokyo Dark script comes in at around 50,000 words, and we still have some major scenes and ending sequences to add. Novels are usually in the 50,000 to 80,000 word count range. In video game terms:Heavy Rain has a word count of 40,000, Mother 3: 47,000, Suikoden: 48,000.

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Tokyo Dark's final script will have more text than usually found in an adventure game, but light on text compared to a full visual novel (Steins;Gate hits 620,000 words!) We're very happy with this balance.

[ Tokyo Game Show ]

Last week we were at Tokyo Game Show and had a fanatic time. It was lovely to catch up with some of you backers and introduce new players to Tokyo Dark. Thank you to everyone you dropped by to play and say hi.

Maho and Tedra chat to IGN Japan

Our little booth often had long queues!

We ran into Iga, who offered us whips (of course!)

While at TGS Maho was invited to Tokyo Otakumode's stage to livestream and chat about Tokyo Dark. You can watch the interview / gameplay introduction here. (TD coverage starts at 00:54:00)

This week (Sept 22nd to Sept 25th) Tokyo Dark is at EGX, the UK's largest gaming event. Square Enix Collective are running our booth in the Rezzed area, so if you're around that part of the world, you could be playing the first chapter of Tokyo Dark (and all the other incredible SEC games) right now! Go! Go! Go!

[ Press ]

We've had some good press coverage this month. Tokyo Dark art is in UK Edge magazine, alongside an interview with Phil Elliot, head of Square Enix Collective about the formation of SEC, detailing how and why Square Enix are supporting indies. Closer to home we were chosen by IGN Japan as one of their 4 picks from Tokyo Game Show.

Superbacker

Another wonderful update chock full of amazing news and photos. The opening animation artwork looks incredible. I am so glad that we, as a community, were able to make that possible. It's going to give the game a much more robust presentation. I can't wait to see more! Is it Oct. 29th yet?!?